Welcome to Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Europe!
HSTAM / GWSS 343
Course Description
The Middle Ages played a critical role in the construction of modern Western gender and sexual identities, as well as our conception of love and romance. This course explores medieval European conceptions of gender, sex, and sexuality through the close reading of primary sources, including Christian religious texts, legal texts, medical treatises, histories, and a variety of literary genres. Topics will include normative Christian views of gender and sexuality, as well as forms of gender expression and sexuality that the Church condemned and attempted to police, legislative efforts to enforce gender and sexual norms, medieval understandings of intersex bodies, and ideas about love and marriage.
This class is intended as a complement to HSTAM 340: Medieval Women, but will cover different material using different sources.
W Credit:
All students enrolled in this course will receive a W credit. You do not have to submit additional work to receive it.
Learning Objectives
This course is intended to help students refine their critical analysis and argumentative writing skills. In addition to learning about gender and sexuality in medieval Europe, students will learn to:
- contextualize, analyze, and evaluate primary sources
- use primary sources to make informed and persuasive written arguments about the past
- critically evaluate scholarly arguments in secondary sources
- apply critical theory to the historical development of gender and sexuality
- reflect critically on the differences and similarities between the institutions and people that we are studying and those of the modern western world
- appreciate that historical inquiry is influenced by the cultural and historical context of the historians conducting it
Instructor Contact Info:
Professor Urbanski (urbanski@uw.edu)
Office: 106 Smith (in the east stairwell between the 1st and 2nd floors)
Office Hours: Mondays 11-12 in person, Thursdays 1-2 on zoom (https://washington.zoom.us/j/91220586269), or by appointment
TA: Ilsa Abdul Razzak
Office: 103D Smith
Office Hours: Wednesdays 12-1 (https://washington.zoom.us/j/5071503091), or by appointment
General Rules for Contacting Instructors:
- Please check the syllabus and/or assignment handout to see if they contain the information you need before emailing instructors with questions.
- You can email us to make appointments or for quick questions, but you should come to see us during office hours or after lecture for anything that requires more than a one or two sentence response.
- Office hours are periods that we set aside specifically to meet with our students. You should come to office hours if you need help with an assignment, have questions that require a detailed response, or just want to chat about the course, medieval stuff, monsters, or cats. You can even come to office hours with a friend from class if you like.
- We check our email regularly during normal business hours (M-F between 8 am and 5 pm).
- We will reply to emails within a reasonable time-frame (within 24 hours during the week and by the afternoon of the next business day for emails received over the weekend or on holidays).
Assignments and Grading:
We will be reading 100-150 pages most weeks, writing 1 page reading responses most weeks, and producing two papers, in addition to having a midterm and final exam.
15% - Weekly writing assignments
20% - Midterm Exam (open 10/20 at 8 am to 10/21 at 11:59 pm)
20% - 1200-1500 word (4-5 pages) paper reviewing a secondary study due 10/27 by 11:59 pm
25% - 1800- 2100 word (6-7 pages) paper on a topic of your choice due 11/17 by 11:59 pm
20% - Final Exam (open 12/8 at 8 am to 12/9 at 11:59 pm)
You must turn in both papers and take both exams in order to pass the course.
Grades will be assigned as percentages on individual assignments and exams and converted to the 4.0 scale for the final course grade.
4.0 95-100%
3.5 90%
2.5 80%
1.5 70%
0.7 62% (lowest passing grade)
Late Assignments and Extensions
All assignments are due by the stated date and time. However, I do understand that life sometimes interferes with our plans. I have a “no questions asked" policy for extensions. If you are asking for an extension, I will presume you have good reasons and will grant the extension as long as it is:
- submitted to me by email (urbanski@uw.edu) before the due date/time, and
- you tell me in your email when you will turn in the work (it should be within two days at most unless there are extenuating circumstances)
If you submit frequent requests for extensions, I will reach out to see what is going on and reserve the right to grant them or not.
Late Penalties: any assignments that are submitted late (i.e., after the original due date/time if you have not received an extension, or after your extension expires if you have received one) will be docked 10% per day (including weekends and holidays).
Required Books:
There are no required books to purchase for this class. The readings for this course are PDFs embedded in the syllabus below or links to ebooks that are free to use through the UW Library website.
Recommended Books:
Miri Rubin, The Middle Ages: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2014)
Judith Bennett and Sandy Bardsley, Medieval Europe: A Short History (Oxford, any edition)
If you are unfamiliar with medieval Europe, these books provide a helpful overview of the period.
Resources:
Epistolae: Medieval Women's Latin Correspondence (with English translations) https://epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu/women
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Indexhttp://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/Default.aspx
Internet Medieval Sourcebook https://origin.web.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.asp
Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval Studies https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/labyrinth
Monastic Matrix: A scholarly resource for the study of women’s religious communities from 400 to 1600 CE http://monasticmatrix.org
Medievalists.net has a great collection of short articles aimed at the general public on just about every topic you can think of http://medievalists.net
The Met Museum's exhibition Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/spectrum-of-desire-love-sex-and-gender-in-the-middle-ages/exhibition-objects
Lectures:
Lectures are extremely important in this class. Since we do not have a textbook, my lectures will focus on placing medieval ideas about gender and sexuality within a historical framework. If you miss lecture, you will lack the historical context necessary to understand and interpret our primary sources. Exams will focus on material presented in lecture, and papers will require you to integrate material from lecture to analyze our primary sources.
Lectures will be recorded using Panopto so you can review them and catch up on any you miss. Just be aware that things can sometimes go wrong with the Panopto recordings (like missing audio), so they are not a perfect substitute for coming to class. I will also post my Powerpoints after lecture (they will be under Files in the Powerpoints folder).
Reading and Discussion:
We will be reading 100-150 pages most weeks and we will discuss that reading during the second half of class on Wednesdays. You should complete the reading for the week before class on Wednesdays and come to class prepared to contribute to discussion.
Weekly Short Writing Assignments (Reading Responses):
We will also have weekly short writing assignments due before class on Wednesdays in which I will pose a general question about the week’s reading, and you will provide a 250-300 word response (these should take you about 30 minutes to complete and links to the assignments are embedded in the syllabus below). The writing assignments are meant to ensure that you have done the reading for the week, given it some thought, and are prepared for discussion. They also give you a low stakes opportunity to write about our primary sources and receive feedback, and will help prepare you for the kinds of writing we will do on the papers and exams.
The weekly short writing assignments comprise 15% of your grade for the course. Each assignment will be graded on a 100% scale; zeros will be given in cases where no writing assignment or an assignment that demonstrates no familiarity with the reading is submitted.
Everyone will be allowed to miss one weekly writing assignment without penalty.
Participation in Discussion:
While it will be impossible for everyone to participate in discussion every week in a class this large, you should make a point of contributing to discussion at least a few times during the quarter. Even if you do not regularly contribute to discussion, your attentive presence during discussion will help to clarify the material and prepare you for papers and exams.
Papers:
One of the major goals of this course is to help you improve your ability to read and analyze historical sources and to write persuasive historical essays. It is a fundamental premise of this class that writing is a means of learning. Reading and talking about documents from the past are useful exercises; however, writing about those texts requires you to engage with them in an entirely different manner. Learning to analyze and review the writing of others is also an excellent way to improve your own writing. There are two required papers for this course. The first paper asks you to read, analyze, and review a secondary work in the field. The second and longer paper asks you to tackle a question that interests you using a primary source we have read in class. Instructions for the papers will be posted on the course website and discussed in class. Both papers are required to pass the course.
Exams:
The midterm and final exam will each be available through Canvas for two days. You can decide when and where to take them within this open period. Both exams will include definitions and short answer questions drawn from lecture, as well as a primary source analyses section. I will issue study guides for the exams a week in advance of each exam. Both exams are required to pass the course.
Academic Standards and Conduct:
Honesty, ethical conduct, and academic integrity are expected in this course. Academic integrity includes a commitment to not engage in or tolerate acts of falsification, misrepresentation, or deception. Acts of dishonesty include cheating or copying, plagiarizing, submitting another person's work as one’s own, using Internet sources without citation, having another student take your exam or working together with other students on your exam, tampering with the work of another student, facilitating other students’ acts of academic dishonesty, etc.
Unless I specify otherwise, all assignments and exams are to be completed by the student alone, without inappropriate assistance of any kind (this includes using any form of AI assistance, such as ChatGPT).
Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Two of the main goals of this course are to hone your critical thinking skills and your argumentative writing skills. These skills are incredibly important for getting through life. In fact, they're far more important than your ability to recall things like what year the Norman Conquest happened. Relying on AI to produce assignments for you not only deprives you of valuable opportunities to practice these skills, the technology tends to turn out papers that are lacking in specific detail and slightly off-topic. In other words, using AI deprives you of the chance to think for yourself, and it doesn't even do a good job. It is also important to remember that text generators like ChatGPT are sometimes wrong, and that they are not familiar with my lectures. If an AI tool gives you incorrect information and you use it on an assignment, you will be held accountable for it.
You should never use AI as a substitute for your own thought or your own writing, but there are two circumstances in which you are allowed to use AI in this class (your other professors will likely have very different policies, so do not assume that my policies will apply in your other classes).
The use of AI is allowed in this class under the following circumstances only (any other use is prohibited):
1. You may use AI to provide you with explanations of concepts or to organize your notes. I would much prefer that you ask me for clarification if you are having trouble with any of the material in this course, and I am happy to answer questions after class or during my office hours, but I recognize that some of you will want to use AI for this. However, if the AI gives you incorrect information and you use that information on an assignment or exam, you will be held accountable for it.
2. You are allowed to use tools like Grammarly or Quillbot to proofread or edit writing that you have produced yourself. Just be aware that using these tools to edit your work comes with the risk that it may change your original writing so much that it no longer reflects your original thought, so make sure you are using it for simple grammar and spelling checks, not to substantially rewrite your work.
The unauthorized use of artificial intelligence (AI) can be a form of academic misconduct at UW. Tools that use AI and large language models to generate text or images, such as ChatGPT, GPT4, Bing Chat, and "Write with AI" in Google Docs (the "help me write" feature now in beta testing in Workspace Labs), are usually prohibited by instructors in Department of History courses. Unless your instructor has expressly permitted the use of such tools, check with your instructor before using them. The unauthorized use of such tools may constitute academic misconduct and could result in serious disciplinary action.
PENALTIES FOR SUSPECTED PLAGIARISM OR UNAUTHORIZED USE OF AI
I know that most of you are honest, hard-working, and would not dream of cheating. I see you and I appreciate you. You are the reason I love this job. However, there are always a couple of students who try to see what they can get away with. This policy is for them.
- All assignments containing suspected plagiarism or AI use will be sent to the Office of Community Standards and Student Conduct for investigation and the enforcement of appropriate sanctions. If the Office of Student Conduct determines that plagiarism or AI use took place, the student will receive a 0 on that assignment.
- Any student found to have committed a second instance of plagiarism or AI use by the Office of Community Standards and Student Conduct will fail the course.
Technology Support
If you experience issues with Canvas, here is a basic troubleshooting guide. You can also contact help@uw.edu
Accommodations:
Please let me know as early as possible if you require religious accommodations or DRS accommodations, or if there is anything I can do to support your learning style.
Information on UW policies regarding Religious Accommodations, Student Conduct, Disability Resources, Academic Integrity, and Campus Safety can be found at https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/syllabi-guidelines
SCHEDULE OF CLASSES
The syllabus is subject to change at the instructor’s discretion.
WEEK ONE: INTRODUCTION
Lectures:
W 9/24 Intro to Gender and Sexuality and to Medieval Europe
NO READING THIS WEEK
WEEK TWO: Sex in the Early Middle Ages
Lectures:
M 9/29 Medieval Understandings of Gender and Sexuality
W 10/1 Sexuality and the Law I (Early Middle Ages)
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
The Penitential of Theodore, Laws of Aethelbert of Kent and Alfred of Wessex
Reading Guide (these are questions to keep in mind as you read and should help you focus on what is important):
The Penitential of Theodore
- What types of infractions does the penitential cover?
- Which infractions are more serious (i.e. which are given harsher penances and which are given lighter penances)? What kinds of variables seem to determine whether an infraction is more or less serious?
- Are same-sex infractions treated more harshly than opposite-sex infractions?
- Are men and women treated the same? What are some of the differences?
- Are clergy and laypeople treated the same? What are some of the differences?
- What are some of the concerns around marriage and adultery? Does it appear that people could remarry, get divorced, or leave their spouse?
- What kinds of things does this source reveal about life in the Early Middle Ages?
Laws of Aethelbert of Kent, Laws of Alfred of Wessex
- What types of infractions do the laws cover? Why would the king be interested in addressing these things?
- Which infractions are more serious and result in higher fines? What kinds of variables seem to determine whether an infraction is more or less serious?
- In cases of rape and abduction, where do the fines go, and what does this tell us about who is considered the injured party?
WEEK THREE: Marriage and Romantic Love
Lectures:
M 10/6 The Opposition between Love and Marriage
W 10/8 Love and Sex Within Marriage
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
Chretien de Troyes, Lancelot, The Knight of the Cart (free ebook through UW Library https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=3420214 ) skim the introduction and read pp. 1-224 (this is a verse romance, so it's not as long as it appears from the page count)
Reading Guide (these are questions to keep in mind as you read and should help you focus on what is important):
- Who is Chretien de Troyes? Why is he writing? What kind of text is this? Who was its intended audience?
- How is romantic love portrayed in this work? What about marriage? Do marriage and love seem to be compatible?
- How do Lancelot and Guinevere act toward each other? What do they do to prove their love to each other? Does one of them seem to be trying harder than the other? Why?
- Who seems to be in charge in this relationship? Why?
- How problematic would Lancelot's relationship with Guinevere be in real life?
WEEK FOUR: Masculine Ideals (High and Late Middle Ages)
Lectures:
M 10/13 Chivalric Culture
W 10/15 Masculinity in Literature
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
Geoffroi de Charny, A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry (free ebook through UW Library https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=3442018) skim the introduction and read pp. 58-109
Reading Guide (these are questions to keep in mind as you read and should help you focus on what is important):
- Who is Geoffroi de Charny? Why is he writing? What kind of text is this? Who was its intended audience?
- Is this text descriptive (it describes things as they exist) or prescriptive (it describes how things should be)?
- What kinds of recommendations does he make for knights? What does he think they should do, and what should they avoid? Why is he giving this advice?
- How important is a knight's reputation?
- What roles do women play in chivalry?
- How important is Fortune?
- How does the order of knighthood compare with the order of priesthood?
- How is chivalry portrayed in this text, and how do you think this compares with the actions of real knights?
WEEK FIVE: Other Masculinities
*MIDTERM EXAM OPEN MONDAY (10/20) AT 8 AM TO TUESDAY (10/21) AT 11:59 PM
Lectures:
M 10/20 Men Outside of Marriage and the Homoerotic Subculture of the Choir
W 10/22 Cross-Dressing Knights
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
The Gay Love Letters of Some Medieval Clerics (4 pages)
Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship skim the introduction and read pp. 51-126
Reading Guide (these are questions to keep in mind as you read and should help you focus on what is important):
- Who are the letter writers in the first source? What types of emotions are they expressing in their letters? Do they seem to express erotic love?
- Who is Aelred of Rievaulx? Why is he writing? What kind of text is Spiritual Friendship? Who was its intended audience?
- What other sources is Aelred drawing upon and how do they influence his text?
- How does Aelred define spiritual friendship, how does it differ from other forms of friendship, and what does he think its purpose is?
- What does Aelred say about signs of affection, like kissing, between friends?
- What are the limitations of friendship, and why do they exist?
- What advice does Aelred give for choosing friends?
- How does Aelred describe friendship between men? How does this differ from understandings of male friendship in modern American culture?
- In retrospect, has Aelred's work affected the way you interpret the letters written by Alcuin, Walafrid, and Marbod? Why, or why not?
WEEK SIX: Feminine Ideals
*FIRST PAPER DUE MONDAY, 10/27, BY 11:59 PM
Lectures:
M 10/27 Femininity in Practice (Marriage, Household, and Reproduction)
W 10/29 Femininity and Literature
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies (free ebook through UW Library https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=5508489) skim the introduction and read pp. 85-161
Reading Guide (these are questions to keep in mind as you read and should help you focus on what is important):
- Who is Christine de Pizan? Why is she writing? What kind of text is this? Who was its intended audience?
- What inspires Christina to build the City of Ladies and who helps her build it?
- What kinds of misogynistic assumptions is Christina rebutting in this work? How does she rebut them?
- Which specific vices were women associated with according to Christine?
- Are there any arguments that Christine makes that appear to be ahead of her time? What arguments does she make that are entirely true to her time?
- Does Christine's defense of women challenge Christian assumptions about the divinely ordained superiority of men over women?
WEEK SEVEN: Other Femininities
Lectures:
M 11/3 Women Outside of Marriage
W 11/5 Homoerotic Nuns and Cross-Dressing Saints
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
The Life of Christina of Markyate, skim the introduction and read pp. 3-88
Note: this is a work of hagiography, also known as a vita or a saint's life. Hagiographies are essentially biographies of holy people and include accounts of dreams, visions, and miracles that demonstrate the sanctity of the holy person in question. While modern readers often find these elements confusing and prefer to stick to the factual elements of the person's life, or attempt to diagnose saints with mental or physical conditions that would explain their visions and/or actions, we have to remember that most of the medieval people who read or heard these works earnestly believed in God, the saints, the devil, and demons, and that they considered elements like dreams, visions, and miracles important facts. Try to understand how medieval people would have interpreted these elements instead of dismissing them as fictional or irrelevant - they are the most important parts of a saint's life!
Reading Guide (these are questions to keep in mind as you read and should help you focus on what is important):
- Who wrote this work? What kind of text is this and what is its purpose? Who was its intended audience?
- How was Christina called to a religious life and what obstacles did she encounter in entering religion? Were her parents supportive? Did her community support her?
- What can Christina's experiences tell us about the conduct of members of the clergy like bishops? Did they always respect their vows of celibacy?
- What can Christina's life tell us about the status of women and the social expectations placed on them? How does Christina's status change after she enters religion and how does it change again after she becomes a prioress?
- What kinds of challenges did Christina encounter once she entered religion?
- What kinds of dreams, visions, and miracles confirm Christina's holiness?
- How important were virginity and celibacy to Christina? Why?
WEEK EIGHT: Sex and Gender Diversity
*IF YOU ARE CREATING YOUR OWN PAPER TOPIC FOR THE SECOND PAPER, YOU MUST SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSED TOPIC TO ME (URBANSKI@UW.EDU) FOR APPROVAL NO LATER THAN WEDNESDAY, 11/12, BY 11:59 PM
Lectures:
M 11/10 Intersex Bodies
W 11/12 Trans as a Category of Historical Analysis
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
Roman de Silence (free ebook through UW Library https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/washington/detail.action?docID=3338360 ) skim the introduction and read pp. 2-316 (this seems really long, but it's a facing page translation of a verse romance, so you'll only be reading about 150 very short pages)
Reading Guide (these are questions to keep in mind as you read and should help you focus on what is important):
- Who wrote this work? What kind of text is it and what is its purpose? Who was its intended audience?
- Why do Silence's parents decide to raise her as a boy? How does Silence feel about this decision?
- What arguments do Nature and Nurture make? Which of them wins in the end?
- Why does Eufeme try to have sex with Silence? What is the narrative purpose of these attempted seductions and what do they illuminate about Silence's own sexuality? How does this complicate Silence's gender presentation?
- How does the story end, and why is the ending important?
- Would you characterize this story as subversive, or does it ultimately uphold normative ideas about gender and sexuality?
- What can this romance tell us about popular attitudes toward gender and sexuality? Could popular attitudes sometimes be odds with religious and secular laws?
WEEK NINE: Sex in Popular Culture
*SECOND PAPER DUE MONDAY, 11/17, BY 11:59 PM
Lectures:
M 11/17 Sex in Literature and the Visual Arts
W 11/19 Sex in Popular Culture
DISCUSSION (complete the reading and submit the writing assignment before class on Wednesday):
Fabliaux Fair and Foul, skim the introduction and read pp. 15-35, 54-69, and 99-129
Reading Guide (these are questions to keep in mind as you read and should help you focus on what is important):
- Who kinds of texts are these and what is their purpose? What do we know about their authors? Who was their intended audience?
- Are there any recurring themes or recurring types of characters? What are they? Why do you think they would have appealed to a medieval audience?
- Who seems to be the hero and who seems to be the villain in each of these stories? How do you know?
- What can we learn about popular attitudes to gender and sexuality from these stories?
WEEK TEN: Sex and the Other
Lectures:
M 11/24 The Imagined Sexuality of Others (Heretics, Jews, and Muslims)
W 11/26 NO CLASS – THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
NO READING THIS WEEK
WEEK ELEVEN: The Late Middle Ages
Lectures:
M 12/1 Sexuality and the Law II (Late Middle Ages)
W 12/3 Conclusion
NO READING THIS WEEK
FINAL EXAM OPEN FROM MONDAY (12/8) AT 8 AM TO TUESDAY (12/9) AT 11:59 PM